Suralink Enhances and Simplifies Audit Evidence Collection Process

Overall we've really enjoyed using Suralink and recommend it to all. Support is great too. Easily add licenses as needed.

Pros

Gone are the days of having a DRL or PBC that you manage in an Excel spreadsheet over e-mail or in a Dropbox, Box, or Sharepoint. Suralink does it for you with individual line items for each request, easy drag & drop to upload files, easily download all or just new files, track status, assign owners to requests, make requests private, and more. Can be used for any audit or advisory project where you need evidence from the client. Pay per firm user. Storage is unlimited, client engagements are unlimited.

Cons

Suralink is still developing new functionality. Just released some new APIs that should help. Security only has 2 levels: Staff or Manager.

Best PBC Request/File Share Site I Have Used

Exceptional. I've used a few different PBC request/file share sites and none of them have come close

Pros

Very simple to use, the client view is just like the audit team view so I can walk them through the site, easy to upload, has almost every feature we were looking for, and they are constantly upgrading based on my feedback

Cons

No setup to send automatic status updates to clients throughout an engagement. Must remember to send them manually

Tech support unresponsive and unhelpful

User level, three years in, never had a problem until last week. Don't bother reaching out to their tech support people unless you enjoy screaming into the abyss.

Pros

I'm a user. When Suralink works, it works fine. The UI could be a little more user-friendly but that's not fatal.

Cons

When the software starts throwing errors (and they all do, eventually) and you reach out to tech support, you're on your own. I spent TWO HOURS trying to clarify THEIR problem for the folks in the online chat, then I got the standard "We're so sorry. We're working on your problem and we'll notify you VERY SOON about our progress" email and that's the last I've heard. I'm very disappointed in the level of customer care these folks are showing.

Efficiency and Clarity

I am all in on this app. My clients are appreciating it too. Efficiency on our side and theirs is up.

Pros

I really like the ability to go in, as an audit manager, and get an idea of the status of the audit is. I can see how responsive the client is. I can see how responsive staff is being. This allows me to focus on my attention on the clients that are being responsive. This is very important during busy season. I am constantly in Suralink during busy season, even if staff is doing the interacting with the client. I am also quickly finding the power of the status reports that are sent out to the client and I am beginning to only send communication to the client through the status report function rather than email from Outlook.

Cons

The process of switching from one engagement to another takes one or two steps more than I would like. Maybe having a tool/navigation bar on the side could help.

Completely streamlined audit process

Pros

Our organization is extremely complex due to the fact that we have a large number of Legal Entities. The ability to create Audit PBC templates and simply copy those across all our entities in mass has reduced the administrative burden to near-zero time spent by our IT team. The administration is simple enough that our External Auditors own 95% of the process. Prior to adopting Suralink, this process was maintained on SharePoint and was an extremely burdensome process for our organization.

Cons

It would be nice to create dynamic PBCs based on a questionnaire. Often times the nature of our legal entities will create additional PBC items. This is ruled base and could be automated, but is manageable to manually track.